Molgrips
And ignore the practicalities… This kind of “thinking” gives the green movement a bad name and is actually harming progress.
Exactly my point...
EITHER climate change is way and above and by far the over-riding challenge or it isn't.
Green fundies like me would get rid of all private cars
and refuse to use buses and .... lets abolish commercial farming??
All of which leads back to how do YOU plan to depopulate to the extent your fundy principals can be put into practice for everyone across the entire planet?
But if the solution to prevent a mass extinction event for humans involves removing all industrialization, then that will cause a mass extinction event.
Squirrelking
Okay now I know you’re trolling. Either that or you really need to go speak to a professional, and I don’t mean an engineer. The nuclear industry cannot and absolutely will not tolerate such a lax attitude to safety.
Skewed reality here ... a near certainty of hundreds of millions and potentially billions dying from climate change vs a couple of limited nuclear accidents (perhaps)?
But if the solution to prevent a mass extinction event for humans involves removing all industrialization, then that will cause a mass extinction event.
It's just "accelerated depopulation" so the survivors can all live "sustainably".
It's not only deindustrialization though it's removing commercial farming and replacing fields with the natural forests and biodiversity.
I'll admit, other than the killing everyone it sounds quite idyllic.
I go back to how many people the world/UK supported before ... there is a reason the US and Canadian first nations had tiny populations and it's not because they had a 1 child policy, it is what the land could support sustainably.
Chuck in some modern medicine and tech and perhaps we multiply that by 5x or 10x ???
We still need to cull billions somewhere...
Its not”ignoring the practicalities” to understand this point. Its dramatic action now or the planet becomes uninhabitable for humans
I do understand the point that we need radical solutions. I fully agree. But simply calling for radical solutions is the easy part. Implementing them is really hard, and that's the bit I'm trying to get you to think about.
How do we ban private cars without catastrophic economic fallout?
I go back to how many people the world/UK supported before … there is a reason the US and Canadian first nations had tiny populations and it’s not because they had a 1 child policy, it is what the land could support sustainably.
They weren't as tiny as you think. Most of them were wiped out by diseases which travelled faster than the European colonisers, so the Europeans never got to meet them. Yes, small tribes were small in the early days of humanity (earlier than North American first nations) but that's because they didn't have the technology to support more people. It would have been possible if they did.
The land can support more people if those people live sustainably. The more sustainably they live, the more can be supported. The problem isn't too many people, it's too many people living unsustainably.
Chuck in some modern medicine and tech and perhaps we multiply that by 5x or 10x ???
We still need to cull billions somewhere…
I think you are just guessing here.
Skewed reality here … a near certainty of hundreds of millions and potentially billions dying from climate change vs a couple of limited nuclear accidents (perhaps)?
Nuclear accidents, by their very nature, are not limited. If you have a release it won't respect any site, local or national boundaries.
What you propose is completely unacceptable to everyone inside and outside the nuclear industry, pro and anti alike.
This is the last I'm saying on the matter, you obviously haven't got the slightest clue about what you're talking about.
In fact, that goes for everything you've been spouting off about. Go and read a book about carbon cycles and carbon neutrality and stop making utter horseshit up to suit your ridiculous arguments.
Molgrips
I think you are just guessing here.
Absolutely .. hence the perhaps.
They weren’t as tiny as you think.
We don't have census data of course but we do for the Sami.
We do have census data for Roman Britain, Norman Britain and more recently.
The romans of course were organised, industrialized and had commercial farming... but lets take their 3.6M and round it up to 4M...
The land can support more people if those people live sustainably. The more sustainably they live, the more can be supported. The problem isn’t too many people, it’s too many people living unsustainably.
I'm not the one promoting this idyllic lifestyle ... I'd like to see their peer reviewed figures and something beyond a religious belief and a roadmap with as-is - to-be and a gap analysis.
I'd like to see as an example how we plan to replace Kingspan type insulation etc. on a global scale without any oil... that isn't straw and dung...
Because frankly... wouldn't it be nice if ... isn't a plan but a dream.
It's an absolute certainty we can't support the current world population ... just as certain as climate change is going to kill millions->billions depending how we focus. That number depends on for example how do we plan to insulate ..
My whole point is we shouldn't be doing ANYTHING we call "green" or "eco" if it actually makes climate change worse in the next 25 years... even if its a lovely dream.
It really amuses me the cognitive dissonance shown on here.
People are going to die in the billions because so few of us will accept that we are part of the problem and so few of us are prepared to accept the reality of the situation and that our lifestyles have to change radically.
Stop pretending fiddling around the edges will do.
so few of us are prepared to accept the reality of the situation and that our lifestyles have to change radically.
I see most of us have agreed with you multiple times.
Nope - not one of you is prepared to accept the lifestyle changes required. Not one. You yourself keep making excuses as to why any solution is impossible. Multiple times on this thread.
You yourself keep making excuses as to why any solution is impossible.
Sigh.
They aren't excuses. An excuse is a reason you don't have to do something. I'm trying to understand HOW we do something.
Molgrips - you will not accept anything that compromises your lifestyle. I cannot be bothered to go back thru this thread but there are multiple examples of this. Any solution radical enough to actually make a significant differnce is dismissed as "not possible" with a load of excuses. Up to you but that attitude is why after 30+ years there is no significant change
There is no solution without radical change to western lifestyles. thats the basic point you will not accept.
Any solution radical enough to actually make a significant differnce is dismissed as “not possible”
That's REALLY not what I've said. It really isn't. You should go back through and read this.
What I'm doing is pointing out that whilst you are correctly calling out the problems, you are not then talking about how to get solutions.
YES WE NEED RADICAL CHANGE. The question is how do we implement it?
You want to ban private cars - ok good, I like that idea. What would you then do to keep the economy working? That's not rhetoric, it's an actual question, I want you to try and answer it.
Im done with it Molgrips. I have explained this many times how to end the reliance on private cars. Ramp up fuel costs dramatically over time, use the money raised to invest in alternatives. You continually misrepresent what I say then make excuses why it will not work
What you do is make excuses why society in general and you in particular cannot take action.
"What would you then do to keep the economy working? " Thats the excuse for not taking action
Without taking action then the economy collapses and billions die. You are looking at this from the wrong direction and refusing to accept the radical change needed
I'm not getting at you personally. most folk think like you on this
Molgrips
You want to ban private cars – ok good, I like that idea. What would you then do to keep the economy working? That’s not rhetoric, it’s an actual question, I want you to try and answer it.
Again these are tactical point solutions ... population of the UK 68M .. number of motor vehicles in India 295M
https://www.statista.com/statistics/664729/total-number-of-vehicles-india/
In a country with the third largest road network in the world, the total number of vehicles in fiscal year 2019 stood at 295.8 million. Road travel seemed to be the preferred choice in India with over 60 percent of the population who used personal or shared vehicles for commute. Not only public commute, the industrial movement of goods through roads had also been on the rise with well over two billion metric tons of freight transported through roads in financial year 2017.
TJagain
Nope – not one of you is prepared to accept the lifestyle changes required. Not one. You yourself keep making excuses as to why any solution is impossible. Multiple times on this thread.
Pot, kettle, black ???
Steve - I have done what I can over my adult life. I consume far less than most in the west. I understand that solutions need to be worldwide and that the solutions need to be radical
I have never commuted by car. I owned a car for a few weeks when I was 17.
I have never bought any: New furniture, crockery, cutlery, TVs, soft furnishing etc etc. 2 new computers in my life. Almost all my consumer electronics ( of which I have far less than most westerners) are second hand. I have owned 2 new bikes in my life
I have spent well over £10 000 on insulating my flat. Similar on my rental flat - I will never get that money back. I fly very rarely.
But yes - even if everyone on the planet had my lifestyle its still unsustainable and my lifestyle has far less impact than most in the west
Im done with it Molgrips. I have explained this many times how to end the reliance on private cars. Ramp up fuel costs dramatically over time, use the money raised to invest in alternatives. You continually misrepresent what I say then make excuses why it will not work
What do you want me to say? "Oh ok then you know best" and then stop?
Or do you want to explore the issues?
Your post is all about YOU. I'm not talking about you I'm talking about everyone.
That post was in answer to Steve. the post answering you was:
I have explained this many times how to end the reliance on private cars. Ramp up fuel costs dramatically over time, use the money raised to invest in alternatives. You continually misrepresent what I say then make excuses why it will not work
What you do is make excuses why society in general and you in particular cannot take action.
“What would you then do to keep the economy working? ” Thats the excuse for not taking action
Without taking action then the economy collapses and billions die. You are looking at this from the wrong direction and refusing to accept the radical change needed
I’m not getting at you personally. most folk think like you on this
What you do is make excuses why society in general and you in particular cannot take action.
No, I'm pointing out a reason WHY society has not taken action. Don't talk to me in particular, the argument is not about me, which is why I'm refraining from getting involved in that.
“What would you then do to keep the economy working? ” Thats the excuse for not taking action
No, it's literally a question, not an excuse. I want you to try and answer it.
When fuel duty goes up, what do you think will happen to the poor people in rural areas who need petrol to get around? Are you going to give them allowances? Rich people will be far less affected by this than the poor, so it's a regressive policy and I don't like those. Environmental solutions should not penalise the poor. This is what I want to discuss. Headline policies are no good without implementation details. Again - this isn't rhetoric, these are actual real questions I want to see answers to.
I already suggested a better solution earlier in the thread. I think I may write to my representatives about this actually.
1. TJ isn't saying ban cars - he's saying that we use ratchet economics to drive them from the road using the tax from those economics to implement change.
2. It's not radical, despite that he says there's a need for radical change.
3. TJ, it wasn't an excuse - it was a failure on molgrips part to read. Mol - he did answer "how?"
4. The real problem here (and an earlier poster identified it) is that people focus on their own good habits and others perceived bad habits and pick the thing which annoys them most as the most practicable target.
5. Steve - arguing about the emission cost of people buying and using sustainable technologies is just dumb. It's a well proven fact that they more than pay for themselves in the lifetime of the product. Equally, you saying that we're essentially making more emissions elsewhere is equally dumb. Technology adoption reduces costs and increases uptake. Those in the west which can afford it in the early adoption phase should pay for it to encourage this.
6. TJ - using the circular argument that the economy won't exist in 30 years, so crushing it now makes more sense, doesn't make sense. If there's no money to do anything, people will default to whatever is cheapest. Just like in the energy crisis with people buying tonnes more wood to burn rather than paying the extra to have a cleaner solution.
Radical thinking - Borrow £300-800bn, build another 10-15 offshore wind installations like Hornsea and Dogger. Massively subsidise the installation of insulation, solar and batteries on every roof/carpark (not fields) and and invest in hydrogen storage (this isn't rocket science - well, it sort of is, but well known rocket science) and turbines to replace existing gas turbines in power plants. Build a UK company to make both the batteries the panels the turbines so it's all made here, etc. Increase taxes to pay the interest on the debt only and then payback the debt with profits from power/battery and panel manufacture including eventual export or selloff of the state owned companies. The UK would be energy secure and carbon neutral (from an energy perspective ) in 10 years. Offer new businesses coming to work in the UK access to free energy for the first 5 years of their operation. Invest the tax from those new companies into new infrastructure.
I’m not getting at you personally. most folk think like you on this
They're right to. Nothing they can do as an individual will make any difference. Even removing all consumption and emissions created by the UK would make no difference. Globally we'll keep using more resources and causing further damage until either large parts of the world become uninhabitable or we find a technological solution.
TJAgain
Steve – I have done what I can over my adult life. I consume far less than most in the west. I understand that solutions need to be worldwide and that the solutions need to be radical
I have never commuted by car. I owned a car for a few weeks when I was 17.
I have never bought any: New furniture, crockery, cutlery, TVs, soft furnishing etc etc. 2 new computers in my life. Almost all my consumer electronics ( of which I have far less than most westerners) are second hand. I have owned 2 new bikes in my life
I have spent well over £10 000 on insulating my flat. Similar on my rental flat – I will never get that money back. I fly very rarely.
But yes – even if everyone on the planet had my lifestyle its still unsustainable and my lifestyle has far less impact than most in the west
TJ, the point is not everyone in the UK let alone globally can.
I have never commuted by car. I owned a car for a few weeks when I was 17.
Your solution to this doesn't scale ... you cycled to work and refused to take a bus and that simply can't work for everyone.
Take something I hope close to your heart like lifesaving pharmaceutical drugs. Skilled people need to physically make the things (and test etc.) and they have to get into work. They may also wish to work elsewhere or retire etc.
Those people also need their equipment and machinery to make and test the drugs and that has to be made somewhere by someone who also has to get into work.
Not everyone is going to break up with someone because they get a job elsewhere and need to drive a car, especially if they have kids.
If my replies have been a bit sporadic, I've been on the roof using some recycled tiles to repair it. I used some $EVIL$ petroleum based sealants .. should I have gone and collected reeds instead.
Under the tiles is some $EVIL$ petroleum based insulation ... if I had 4' of thatch I suppose I'd not need that...
The only issue here is there aren't sufficient reeds in the UK for EVERYONE to do that. Scale that to the food you eat, the insulation you used ..
What we need are solutions that can work for everyone that produce the lowest greenhouse gas footprint GLOBALLY.
Some of these you might not like for other environmental reasons than their greenhouse potential.
India** is converting burning wood to burning gas in rural areas. They have a higher percentage of LPG taxi's and cars that produce less greenhouse gas than petrol and they are investing in nuclear.
(** Why do I bang on about India - partly because I spent a lot of time there, have lots of friends there and still read some of the newspapers I used to read when working there but I've lived and worked in lots of places)
Lets take another, Libya was regreening the Sahara... it's not by itself "sustainable" as they are using a reserve of 1000-4000yrs worth of paleolake that isn't renewed. On the other hand the more they green the more rainfall and the more CO2 captured. Not everything needs to be sustainable!!! If it gets us past the population maxima with minimal deaths we can clean some stuff up more incrementally after.
Still at it?
@tjagain
Of course it needs both time and interim arrangements to reach that aim. But without dramatic action immediately we are looking at deaths in the billions in your childrens lifetimes
Its not”ignoring the practicalities” to understand this point. Its dramatic action now or the planet becomes uninhabitable for humans
Yep. 100%
Implementing them is really hard, and that’s the bit I’m trying to get you to think about.
That's your comfort blanket isn't it - ask everyone else to think about it. But you already know what's required.
Get out there and start forcing government to take real, drastic action, or your grandchildren die.
The suffragettes and Mandela knew what it took to force action. That's what this will take. No less.
>which is why we won't make it<
How do we ban private cars without catastrophic economic fallout?
Who gives a ****. Our economy as it stands needs trashing. We're going to either trash it - and all of humanity - in the future, or we're going to trash it, and some humans - today.
Unfortunately - because all we ever really do is "debate"- we've left it too late to act effectively without incredibly serious consequences. These are the "tough decisions" that governments say they'll make but never do. So we're buggered.
Trashing it all, economic and social fallout and, yes, deaths are inevitable. All we need to argue about now is the type of death - extinction-level or not.
Pick one.
What. We can't say ****?
F. Eck?
I like this @Daffy:
Radical thinking – Borrow £300-800bn, build another 10-15 offshore wind installations like Hornsea and Dogger. Massively subsidise the installation of insulation, solar and batteries on every roof/carpark (not fields) and and invest in hydrogen storage (this isn’t rocket science – well, it sort of is, but well known rocket science) and turbines to replace existing gas turbines in power plants. Build a UK company to make both the batteries the panels the turbines so it’s all made here, etc. Increase taxes to pay the interest on the debt only and then payback the debt with profits from power/battery and panel manufacture including eventual export or selloff of the state owned companies. The UK would be energy secure and carbon neutral (from an energy perspective ) in 10 years. Offer new businesses coming to work in the UK access to free energy for the first 5 years of their operation. Invest the tax from those new companies into new infrastructure.
Costs would be in the lower end of your estimate and this should be bog-standard thinking - we could have done this ages ago.
Renewables aren't subsidised right now. They're so cheap that companies compete to make them. We still subsidise fossil fuels.
But even if we fix 100% of our energy problems - we're not fixing consumption or construction. So this is maybe 20% of the solution we need.
Renewables not subsidised? Yes they are.
https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/370-offshore-wind-subsidies-per-mwh-generated-continue-to-rise
That’s your comfort blanket isn’t it – ask everyone else to think about it. But you already know what’s required.
No, not really, it's not comforting at all it's horrific. And yes, I know what's required, but I don't know how to get everyone to do what's required. Do you?
Who gives a ****. Our economy as it stands needs trashing.
Well the economy is what buys us food and shelter. So you're saying we need to simply destroy everything so that we don't.. destroy everything..? I think in your scenario everything gets destroyed either way. A global economy 30% of its current size isn't going to be able to solve anything.
Get out there and start forcing government to take real, drastic action
Oh lol this again. You make it sound so easy! Got any ideas how? And no, gluing myself to a road probably isn't enough.
@irc:
You really should check your sources:
Renewables not subsidised? Yes they are.
https://www.ref.org.uk/ref-blog/370-offshore-wind-subsidies-per-mwh-generated-continue-to-rise/blockquote >
The "Renewable Energy Foundation" is a campaign group started by Noel Edmonds and CALOR GAS. - the "organisation" exists to spread lies. And you've been suckered in.In reality - wind providers bid for contracts for difference - the amount they'll get paid to generate power. Despite no subsidy they still produce the cheapest energy we can produce (offshore wind).
MOlgrips - and still your only answer is " its impossible" to any solution offered. You really have not grasped this at all
Either we change things in a controlled manner now or in a few decades the dying planet does it for us in an uncontrolled manner and billions die
No significant change to global warming can be done without radical changes in our western lifestyles
You are far from the only one tho
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/commentisfree/2022/nov/02/despite-years-of-exposure-to-the-climate-science-i-dont-believe-we-are-headed-for-total-societal-collapse
Daffy - a decent stab but we do not have a technological solution to energy storage on the scale needed for that to work. the rest is fiddling around the edges
Again the only solution is massive lifestyle changes and using a tiny fraction of the energy we use now
Daffy - I'll expand a little more. Currently we have hours worth of energy storage in the UK in pump storage. We need many weeks worth if we go for wind and solar as our energy sources to cover a winter high pressure event. Its not possible to do this with batteries - simply not enough of the materials available for this to be a worldwide solution and anyway battery production is dirty and energy intensive. Hydrogen - again its a scale issue ( Unst project has been runny this for many years small scale). The amount of hydrogen storage we would need to power the world or even the UK is enormous. To store hydrogen large scale it needs to be liquified - a hugely energy intensive process Its also massively dangerous and technically fairly tricky
Unfortunately the tech for energy storage on the scale needed is just not available - hence the only solution is to reduce energy consumption massively
Squirrelking probably has some numbers on this but relying on tech developments will not do - it needs to be scalable using tech we have now
We don’t have infrastructure for energy storage, but we do have the technology. Hydrogen can be liquefied and stored, we do it for spacecraft all the time. The difficulty for spacecraft is that it needs to be lightweight, but for commercial earth based storage, cast iron is actually much better than carbon fibre and vacuum separation. Really, we don’t even need LH2, we can store hydrogen as a gas, but the volume is massive. The question is one of space. If we’re willing to give up some space to store it, then the easiest option is H2 gas storage, if not, it needs to be the more expensive, LH2 storage which will need to be near to the power plants, or will need to be de-liquefied for pumping to them. None of this is new technology, we’ve been storing, moving burning and generating hydrogen (via electrolysis) for decades. It just needs scaled up and it can be. That’s the beauty of it.
Can it be scaled up tho so we can store weeks worth of even UK energy usage? its in millions of tonnes of storage needed. which is tens of millions of cubic meters of liquified gas or billions of cubic metres if stored as a gas thats storage facilities kilometers across for liquified gas and thousands of facilities a kilometer across if stored as gas or have I lost something in my arithmetic?
Squirrelking? any numbers?
Of course it can. Germany and France store vast amounts of gas as did we once upon a time.
The real beauty of hydrogen via electrolysis is that if you get the balance right, you may not need as much storage if you can generate it quick enough. As such you’d need water storage too. But really, you want storage. It’s the best balancer for renewable power generation.
I still believe it’s a mistake to put hydrogen boilers in peoples homes. I think transitioning to electric heating gives better future options with less infrastructure challenges.
We keep hydrogen for power generation and eventually aerospace.
If you are running the entire UK on wind and solar you need weeks worth of energy stored to cover a winter high pressure event where demand is high and generation next to zero. Natural gas is much easier to store than hydrogen.
Do some numbers daffy please?
Workplaces offering coffee should have a cafetiere rather than a machine. And sugar from a bowl not packets.
And its a taxable benefit.
Not always.
<h4 id="tea-and-coffee">Tea and coffee</h4>
An employer may provide its employees with access in the workplace to tea, coffee or water from a cooling dispenser. If this refreshment is available generally to all employees, the benefit is exempt from charge (EIM21670). If the exemption does not apply, you should accept that these refreshments represent a trivial benefit.
Ah - OK
Anyway hydrogen storage
I like the theory and as I said Unst runs on a hydrogen setup but from my understanding there are huge practical issues with scaling it from a population of 60 to a population of 70 million.
the conversion cycle wind / electricity/ hydrogen / electricity has inefficiencies at every step so you only get out 30% ish of the energy at the end that you put in at the beginning
Hydrogen is not very energy dense so the amount of storage needed is huge
Hydrogen to electricity conversion via a fuel cell needs rare earth / materials so again difficult to scale up. do it via burning and you get NOX production
The main issue tho is the storage. to liquify it needs cooling to minus 200c. Store as a gas then the volume of storage needed is simply impractical
I think with our current tech then enough storage to cover daily fluctuations is possible but to store the weeks worth of energy needed if the generation is all wind and solar is simply not possible because of the scale required.Storage tanks kilometers across even if liquified
And its a taxable benefit.
It is possible to accept an idea as being a reasonable attempt at responding, without trying to shoot it down with erroneous minutae.
I genuinely thought it was. I clearly was wrong and stand corrected. sorry
Anyone who knows more than me do some sums on Hydrogen storage?
Anyone who knows more than me
😆
MOlgrips – and still your only answer is ” its impossible” to any solution offered. You really have not grasped this at all
No. I'm just criticising YOUR solutions, because I don't think they will have good outcomes. I've not once said anything is impossible. I've come up with ideas to address the shortfalls in your ideas, but you're not even interested in debating those, you just keep bashing away at the same sentence. It's like arguing with a brick. Your idea is half baked, and you are refusing to accept any attempts to further the discussion to bake it further. You would make an excellent cabinet member in the current government.
Re hydrogen - compressing it takes lots of energy on its own, and liquifying it even more so.
Hydrogen can be liquefied and stored, we do it for spacecraft all the time.
That's done on a very small scale, and there is a huge amount of money available to do it.
We don't need hydrogen storage @tjagain - we need huge energy networks that can link us to where it's sunny/windy.
The european supergrid never really got going at the pace needed but we can absolutely do it.
The head of the UN environment comittee in 2010 said he was depressed by our response to the banking crash. We spent a lot of money ensuring ric people didn't lose out - and we picked up the tab.
For the same money he insisted he could have solved the world's energy problems - but the urgency isn't there. - solar in the worlds biggest deserts, big cables to connect them all. Job jobbed - always-on energy for the whole planet - the rest being generated by wind and local solar where it's sunny. Added benefit of us increasing the albedo effect of the planet to compensate for arctic melting.
We can do this - easily - right now. It's a simple engineering challenge. But we're not doing it.
Molgrips - sorry dude but you do. You will not accept any solution that requires significant changes in lifestyle. the problem is the only solutions that work require massive changes in lifestyle in the west.
Go on. Outline a solution that will work on the scale required without changing lifestyles massively.
Remember that developing nations want to reach our level of affluence so they need to be scalable worldwide
